Examples of AMELIORATE

trying to ameliorate the suffering of people who have lost their jobs

This medicine should help ameliorate the pain.

The disparate impact of the risk imposed by the “loser pays” rule can be ameliorated. Indeed, there are features of the British legal system which have led some observers to find the rule … to be considerably more benign to poorer litigants. —Edward F. Sherman, Texas Law Review, June 1998

And, after all, some illnesses are psychogenic. Many can be at least ameliorated by a positive cast of mind. —Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World, 1996

Even the abolitionists gave their attention not to the task of ameliorating conditions among slaves but to transforming slaves into free people. —John Hope Franklin, “The Land of Room Enough,” 1981, in Race and History, 1989

Synonym Discussion of AMELIORATE

improve, better, help, ameliorate mean to make more acceptable or to bring nearer a standard. improve and better are general and interchangeable and apply to what can be made better whether it is good or bad <measures to further improve the quality of medical care><immigrants hoping to better their lot>. help implies a bettering that still leaves room for improvement <a coat of paint would help that house>. ameliorate implies making more tolerable or acceptable conditions that are hard to endure <tried to ameliorate the lives of people in the tenements>.